It is a popular and widespread notion
in some quarters that everything that needs to be known about Islamists
and Islamism can be understood through reading classical Islamic texts.
Such texts are said to represent an unchanging “Islamic Doctrine” that
is at the core of not only Islamism but of Islam itself and therefore,
it is argued, there is no essential difference between Islamism and
Islam. Nowhere is this notion more prevalent than when it come to the
issue of antisemitism in the Islamic world which is said in these same
quarters to stem directly from Koranic and Islamic classic teachings
about Jews. The conclusion is drawn that since these texts contain
derogatory references to Jews, that Islam itself is unalterably and
forever antisemitic and that Islamists simply derive their views
straight from the Koran. This “It’s all in the Koran hypothesis” is
central to the writings of an assorted collection of ideologues,
religious zealots, pundits, and outright extremists who are either
unfamiliar with anything resembling genuine scholarship on these issues
or choose simply to ignore it for reasons of their own.
One such genuine scholar whose work is relevant to this issue is Dr. Mark Cohen, Professor
of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. As early as 1986, Dr.
Cohen wrote a paper titled “ Islam and the Jews: Myth, Counter-Myth,
History” in which he took issue with what he calls the “counter-myth” to
the idea that there was an “interfaith utopia” during classical Islamic
times. Dr. Cohen, clearly no pollyanna on the subject, writes:
While the myth of the interfaith Utopia was certainly in need of correction, the counter-myth, with its implicit transvaluation of the older conception of the relative status of the Jews of the West and the East, does not represent a fairer reading of the past. A more balanced approach, such as that taken by Bernard Lewis in his recent book, The Jews of Islam, or by Norman Stillman in the historical introduction to his source book, The Jews of Arab Lands is badly needed. That is because, as any careful and systematic reading of the historical sources shows, despite the theological intolerance that Islam shared with Christendom, the Jews of Islam experienced far greater security and far more integration with the majority society than their brethren in Europe.
Dr. Cohen’s paper shows not only that a
different interpretation of Islamic history is possible but that the
claims of inherent and murderous Islamic antisemitism dating back to
classical Islamic times are not a recent phenomenon.
Another prominent exemplar of genuine scholarship is historian Dr. Martin Kramer,
currently President of Shalem College, an undergraduate liberal arts
college in Jerusalem, and a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, neither organization known to be a bastion of sympathy for
Islamism. Dr. Kramer has had a long and distinguished academic career that
includes having directed the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and
African Studies, teaching as a visiting professor at Brandeis
University, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, and
Georgetown University, and having served as a fellow at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. Dr. Kramer is
also known as a harsh critic of the academic Islamic Studies programs at US universities and as somebody who is very sympathetic to the State of Israel.
So, what does such a scholar of the
subject have to say about the issue of antisemitism in the Islamic
world? In 1995, Dr. Kramer wrote an article for
the Institute of Jewish Affairs titled “The Salience of Islamic
Antisemitism” which began with a cold and sober appraisal following a
terrorist incident in Argentina at the time and which breaks with what
Dr. Kramer called “the long habit of emphasizing only the tolerance of
Islam.” Clearly, this is no ideologue looking either to obscure the
issue or to deny that it exists when he wrote:
Taking a hard look at hard evidence and assessing it soberly means breaking the long habit of emphasizing only the tolerance of Islam—a tolerance which drew so many Jewish scholars to study it in the first place. Islam today is not what it was, and nostalgia is not a very practical sentiment. Today there is Islamic antisemitism—a belief among many Muslims that Jews everywhere, in league with Israel, are behind a sinister plot to destroy Islam. Some of these Muslims believe the battleground is anywhere on the globe where Jews are organized to assist and aid in this plot. As I wrote last year in my Commentary article, ‘The Jihad Against the Jews,’ this antisemitism seems to me so widespread and potentially violent that it could eclipse all other forms of antisemitism over the next decade.
Dr. Kramer goes on to ask “What Are the Origins of Islamic Antisemitism?”, emphasizing the complexity of the question:
The question poses many of the same analytical dilemmas posed by antisemitism elsewhere. How much of it is the legacy of religious prejudice? How much is the product of modern theories of nation and race? How much is root in contemporary society, economics and politics? As any historian will tell you, it is extremely difficult to establish intellectual origins. We can only look at contemporary ideas and try to draw lines to earlier ideas, knowing that none of these lines is straight. The two most common answers—which do draw straight lines—locate the source of this antisemitism either in the essence of Islam, or in the creation of Israel. Let me begin with the first: the idea that Islamic prejudice against the Jews goes back fourteen centuries, that Islamic theology is ipso facto antisemitic. At the time of the Prophet Muhammad, relates the Qur’an, some Jews engaged in treachery against him. This is recorded in the Qur’an as God’s word. Speaking to Jewish audiences, I am often asked by those who have read certain passages of the Qur’an whether Jew-hatred is not endemic to Islam. Is it possible for any Muslim who goes back to these sources to read them as anything other than an indictment of Jewish treachery? There is a view that Islam in its very essence is antisemitic, and that the roots of the antisemitism we see today are authentically Islamic.
When Dr. Kramer describes the view “that
Islam in its very essence is antisemitic” he has perfectly described
the “It’s all in the Koran hypothesis” identified above, clearly not a
recent invention. Yet, having read and studied the same Islamic
scriptures said by some to be the “Islamic Doctrine” on Jews, he draws a
very different conclusion based on a vastly more nuanced
interpretation:
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